Pocket Queue 62

An American Christmas Story
You an tell that I’m quite behind in my reading because this article is (pre-)Christmas! It describes a company called American Christmas whose business is to decorate some of the most well-known places in Manhattan. No insider stories about designing a Christmas display for a high profile client, but some general insight into what it’s like to setup decorations for the festive season.

The two weeks before Christmas are actually the slowest at American Christmas, and that’s when they take all the decorations left in the warehouse and make a boffo display for their annual holiday party. The commercial installations start in August, when teams begin the labor-intensive process of putting lights on live Christmas trees around the city (most clients just don’t turn the lights on until Thanksgiving approaches).

Access Denied
This article starts by talking about Instagram, tabloids and celebrities but it’s actually discussing a very real and interesting issue about the diminishing access media gets with the subject that they are reporting on. The argument is that with the rise of social media, it’s easier and more prudent for the subject to release their own news via their social media accounts instead of asking for it to be presented in a particular way by media.

With Instagram, the power shifts dramatically. A genuine Celeb Couple will have more combined followers on Instagram than virtually any publication, most of whom are actual fans. (There isn’t a single celebrity publication in the top 100 Instagram accounts. People, as an example, the 10th largest magazine in the country with a 3.5 million issue circulation, has 1.1 million followers; Chrissy Teigen’s Instagram pregnancy announcement went out to 4.1 million, and her partner John Legend’s simultaneous post went to another 2.7 million.) If Celeb Couple posts a baby photo themselves, Young Employee suggested, publications would have to embed or print it anyway. Celeb Couple wouldn’t have to fight about how to frame their story, or grant any more access to a reporter or photographer than they want.

The collapse of parenting: Why it’s time for parents to grow up
I am a bit skeptical about this article which proposes that parents have gone lenient in giving kids autonomy and choice and need to swing back the other way. I think that part is true, but what’s missing is a discussion in knowing how far to regress. The answer is moderation, but where is moderation on the spectrum?

Parents in North America have become prone to asking their children rather than telling them. “It’s natural,” says Gordon Neufeld, a prominent Vancouver psychologist cited in Sax’s book. “Intuitively, we know that if we’re coercive, we’re going to get resistance.” For trivial choices such as which colour of pants to wear, this approach is fine, he says. But “when we consult our children about issues that symbolize nurturance like food, we put them in the lead.” That triggers an innate psychological response, and their survival instincts activate: “They don’t feel taken care of and they start taking the alpha role.”

What It’s Like to Go Clubbing When You Have Asperger’s
This article purportedly is about someone awkward going clubbing but I have difficulty seeing that. Two reasons: 1) The article is really well written and the story telling is convincing, and 2) The author seems to have a lot of insights about how the social interaction works. Maybe her Asperger’s is quite mild, but I guess I expected more awkward situations & anecdotes.

The guy reaches across her and holds his phone in front of my face. It says, “everything this girl is saying smells like bullshit.”

I don’t know why he’s so angry about it though. That’s the thing about neurotypicals: They’re so proud. For all their pompously wielded social skills they don’t seem to understand the nature of flaws.

Underneath that he’s typed, “I like your dress.”

I do have a boyfriend. He’s from my support group.

I type my number into the hot guy’s phone.

Another late article related to Christmas – this one is about re-commerce; not the selling of items online but the returning of things online.

More to the point, people most often return things because they are defective. Retailers simply don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the suppliers. “It would be very expensive for a company like Amazon to handle returns,” Ringelsten says. “They would have to sort it out—and there are a million manufacturers out there.” What’s more, he says, manufacturers usually supply items to retailers like Amazon through a contract where it’s understood that items that may be returned will simply be liquidated.